The Saudi-led coalition in the war against Yemen's Houthis announced that the group fired a ballistic missile towards Riyadh in the early hours of Saturday. This action coincided with a fire in a fuel tank near King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh.
Firefighters managed to extinguish the blaze in the fuel tank belonging to the oil company Aramco. Recently released images show black smoke rising above the airport buildings. In recent weeks, the Houthis have launched a rapid attack on new areas in Yemen while the Yemeni government, supported by Saudi Arabia, is trying to respond to these developments.
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Efforts to target civilian facilities
Turki al-Maliki, the spokesman for the Saudi coalition, announced that the country's air force successfully destroyed the missile launched towards Riyadh. He added that the Houthis also attempted to attack civilian areas in Al-Baha, Taif, Farasan, and Yanbu, but these attempts were thwarted by Saudi air defenses.
Saudi Arabia has provided an aggressive response to these attacks and has been conducting multiple airstrikes on Houthi-controlled areas in an effort to halt their advance. However, these efforts have not been able to prevent the Houthis' progress.
Houthi counterattacks and international reactions
The military spokesman for the Houthis, Yahya Saree, announced that the group responded to recent Saudi attacks with "two successful military operations" involving the use of ballistic missiles and drones. The first attack targeted sensitive facilities in Riyadh, and the second targeted Aramco facilities in Yanbu.
In light of these developments, the U.S. State Department and its embassies in the region issued security warnings, indicating a potential escalation of tensions in the area. They emphasized that the Iran-backed Houthis continue their attacks, and this situation could escalate rapidly.
This is the first time during the Yemeni civil war that attacks on Riyadh pose a threat to the Saudi capital, adding more pressure to the global economy, which has already been affected by seven months of conflict between the United States and Iran.
The United Nations has stated that renewed fighting has displaced over 112,000 people, with nearly 3,000 others fleeing to Djibouti. The Yemen war began in 2014, and Saudi military intervention started in March 2015 following the Houthis' capture of the capital, Sana'a.
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